


I speak, but you don't hear me.

by fineandwittie



Category: The Blacklist (TV)
Genre: Dembe - Freeform, Donald Ressler - Freeform, Episode Related, Episode: Ruslan Denisov, F/M, Lizzington - Freeform, abandoned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-15
Updated: 2015-02-15
Packaged: 2018-03-12 23:41:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3359654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fineandwittie/pseuds/fineandwittie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU Post-Denisov. Lizzie goes to Red for help after Detective Wilcox contacts her. </p>
<p>Red would do anything for her, so maybe it's time she realizes that?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I own nothing. 
> 
> I haven't written fanfiction in a bit and never a Blacklist fic. I'm sorry if Red or Lizzie are OOC. 
> 
> Red's speech is so hard to write. James Spader is a fucking genius, but he's hard to imitate (i read somewhere that Spader writes most of Red's lines?).

There was a soft knock at the door and Red broke off his instructions to Dembe to call, “Come.”

Liz opened the door slowly and took a hesitant step inside.

“Agent Keen, what prompts this lovely surprise?” Red turns towards her fully and tilts his head.

She swallows, the fear she’s been carrying since getting off the phone with that detective sitting heavy in her gut.

“Red, I…Listen, I know I haven’t exactly been…I…” She can’t seem to marshal her thoughts for this and he’s growing at her.

“Lizzie, sit. Take a breath. Tell me what’s wrong.”

She follows his instructions, exhaling in a quiet rush as she drops onto the couch. “I need your help.”

Her voice is quiet. She thinks if she speaks any louder it will crack.

Red frowns and crouches in front of her to catch her eye. “Anything, Lizzie. You know that. What’s wrong?”

“I…I received a call earlier. About the harbormaster.”

He blinks. “Ah. Of course. What was the number?”

She hands him her phone and opens her mouth to explain more, but he waves her off.

Taking a burner from Dembe, he plugs in the detective’s number.

She listens as the phone rings loud enough for her to hear.

“Detective Wilcox, Metro PD.”

“Detective Wilcox, this is Assistant Director Raymond Cooper, of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I understand that you are investigating the disappearance of a harbormaster?”

“Murder. I’m investigating the murder of a harbormaster, Director. What can I do for you?”  
“Ah. Alright. I was told that you contacted an Elizabeth Keen recently in regards to this?”

“That’s correct. I have a witness willing to testify to a very interesting story about Miss Keen.”

“Agent Keen is one of mine and I have some information regarding your case. Tell me, is the witness a large man, covered in tattoos, with a very distinct sort of claw in his left ear?”

Liz could hear the frown in the detective’s voice.

“How did you know that?”

“Because, Detective, he is a known associate of the man who killed your victim. I am willing to share a good deal of information with you, but I ask in return that you halt your investigation for the moment. I am currently out of the country. As soon as I return, I would ask that you meet with me and Agent Keen. Know, however, that this case is highly classified.”

“How long will you be away?”

“My team should be returning tomorrow. I will call you when we land.”

“Thank you, Director. That would be good. Let me ask you, though. Are you aware of what your Agent did?”

Red exhaled sharply. “Detective, I am well aware of all of the details of this case. What my agent did and did not do, as well as what your witness is lying about, as is his tendency. You have him in custody, I presume?”

“Yes.”

“Could you hold him until we meet?”

“Yes. I was planning to release him today, for his cooperation, but if you are telling me that he’s not trustworthy, I think that’s reason enough for an additional 24 hours.”

“Thank you very much, Detective. I will call you as soon as we touch down.”

Red gestures to Liz and then to the room around them. She blinks for a second, not understanding, before her eyes widen.   
She stands and moves closer to him. “Director, Prime Minister Mirziyoyev is waiting to meet with you.”

“Excuse me, Detective, but I must be going. I will speak with you soon.”

The detective’s voice is faint when he replies. “Of course, Director.”

Red hangs up and hands the phone back to Dembe. “Call Mr. Kaplan. We have a problem.”

Dembe nods and moves to dial, but Liz reaches out.

“Red, I’m sorry. About all this. About how I’ve been treating you. I…I guess I just…”

Red nods to Dembe, who exits quickly, and pulls Liz back to sit on the couch.

“I just wanted to mean something to you, I suppose. More than just being…a means to an end. Which is stupid and childish, I know that, but I…”

“My God…You’re meant to be a profiler! How is it possible that you continually read me so poorly?”

She blinks up at him, her eyes still pained, but with a spark of confusion now. 

“Lizzie, do you remember Anslow Garrick?”

She nods, frowning.

“I lost Luli that day. I cared for her, very much. I almost lost Dembe, who is a brother to me.”

She nods again.

“You are the one who forced me out of the box.”

She sighs, ever so slightly. “Red, You tried to get the code for both of them. You begged Cooper. I saw the video footage. It was heartbreaking and I don’t think I ever said how sorry I was about Luli. She was lovely. I would have liked to get to know her. But you did. You tried for both of them.”

Red grits his teeth. She is being purposefully obtuse. She had to be.  
“Lizzie, I was going to shoot Donald in the head if he didn’t give me that code for you. Not for Dembe, not for Luli. For you. I couldn’t lose you. I couldn’t let him kill you. I couldn’t. Not because of my nefarious plans or the almighty fulcrum. What use is the fulcrum to me, if I’m dead? I believed, because I wasn’t thinking clearly and I hadn’t realized exactly what was going on, that Garrick wanted to kill me…Well, he did want to kill me, but I believed that he would. That he was there to take revenge for shooting him. I was trading my life for yours. I would do so again, gladly.”

She blinks at him.

“Red, I…”

“Lizzie, I care about you a very great deal and if I never find the fulcrum? Well, what is, is. It is only important and my enemies…our enemies, think that I have it, whether I do or not.”

“You care about me? None of this…was about revenge then? Or the Fulcrum?”

He blinks. Inhales slowly and holds it for a beat, before he exhales in a gust. “I won’t lie to you, Lizzie. I will always try never to lie to you. But if there are only two things that you ever believe of me, let it be these: that I care for you and that I would do anything to protect you, to keep you safe and alive. That said, no. I can’t say that none of this was ever just about revenge.”

She blinks at him, her eyes going flat and hollow.

“My original plan was revenge and a power-grab. To find the fulcrum and to use you to get back at your father. I cared about your wellbeing in a vague sort of way, before all this. I wasn’t planning on hurting you, but should it have become necessary, I would haven’t stopped. Your father…you know he’s a career criminal. He’s number 1 on the blacklist. But…things changed.”

“When?” Her voice is a whisper again.

“When I looked up from my captive’s chair and saw you sit down across from me. You were…you are magnificent. You’re beautiful and poised and cocky. You looked me in the eye. I don’t remember the last person I met who was not intimidated by me. People who do not know me…tend not to meet my eye upon first meeting. But you did. I realized that my plans would need to be adjusted, but my…let’s say my priorities didn’t change until later that day.”

She frowns at him.

“When you stomped into my hotel room, enraged and unafraid, and you stabbed me in the neck with my own pen. That was the moment I fell in love with you, Lizzie, and everything changed.”

She blinks, trying to assimilate this. He loves her? He…loves her? Raymond Reddington?

“You’re in love with me?” She repeats and, amazingly, Red’s cheeks flush faintly and he refuses to meet her eyes.

“Lizzie, know that whatever you need, wherever you are, and whomever you are with, I will always help you, as long as I draw breath.”

“Red…” She pauses, thinking. “Raymond.”

Because she’s so close to him, she can feel the shiver that runs down his spine at her use of his given name. She smiles. 

Hope bubbles stupidly up inside his chest. Her smile is genuinely happy, filled with pleasure and affection.

“Raymond, you’re in love with me? Good. I’m glad.”

His eyes snap to hers and he blinks. Good? The hope drains away. He searches her expression for triumph, for…he’s not sure what. For love? He doesn’t see either. Of course, Lizzie doesn’t love him in return. Why he even think that she might? Most of the time she can barely even stand to have him in the same room. He told her he loved her (he hadn’t meant to say that. Why did he let that slip out??) and her response was ‘good.’ Why?

Does she think she can use him for her own purposes now? Her knowledge of his…attachment? His weakness? That he’ll…what? He blinks hard and pushes the thoughts away. Lizzie isn’t like that. She’s too kind, too generous for that. 

His mind calls up an image of Tom, held captive on that ship for months, starving, freezing, dying slowly while she watched him. 

Why would she say good?

She brings her hands up and takes hold of his face. Pulling him forward gently until he drops to his knees properly and straightens to meet her mouth, she kisses him. Softly. As lovingly as she knows how. She can’t say it. Not yet. But she wants him to know that she feels the same. That her reaction to Luther Braxton was fueled by the pain of his perceived betrayal and her love for him.

In the background, Liz vaguely registers the door opening and hears Ressler’s voice.

“Reddington, have you seen—Holy fuck!”

Red pulls back so quickly he almost overbalances and turns to stare at Ressler.

The blond agent is gaping at them and Liz has to suppress a little smirk. 

What a sight they must be. Raymond Reddington, once again, kneeling on the floor at her feet, as she sits and bestows kisses on him, like some classical tableau.

She stands quickly and takes a step away from Red. She’s so focused on Ressler that she doesn’t see the flash of pain that Red covers quickly. 

“What are you doing here?”

“Liz, what the hell is this!?!”

“Res, it isn’t—“

Here it comes, he thinks. She’s even using Donald’s nickname.

He sits back on his haunches and waits for her to make excuses. For the ‘It isn’t what it looks like’ or ‘it isn’t what you think.’ 

Because of course it is. He doesn’t have the energy just yet to stand and go back to business as usual. He’s just gotten a glimpse, a taste, of his dearest desires, his most secrets wishes, and now they’re gone again. If they were ever really there, he thinks bitterly. But wasn’t it lovely to pretend, just for a moment that she loved him too. 

The moment he felt her tongue inside his mouth, he was lost. Raymond Reddington is not in the habit of lying to himself and he won’t start know. He knows that whatever she says now, he’ll back her. Whatever lie she uses to worm her way out of this. Whatever she gives him, he’ll take.

He is pathetic. He knows this. 

“Any of your business. What are you doing here?”

Red blinks and turns to look up at her. It isn’t any of Donald’s business? What is she doing?

Ressler is still gaping.

“Liz! What the fuck are you doing! This is Reddington. If you…I mean…I’m right here. Or…I thought you and Aram were…”

Red can almost feel Liz narrow her eyes. Aram? Ressler, he’d worried about. Aram? Had not even crossed his mind.

“Aram and I were?”

“You know. Together? You’re always meeting him places and whispering together in corners. You’re in each other’s space almost as much as you and Red used to be.”

Red swallows painfully. He had not realized that she was even close friends with Aram, never mind what Ressler is suggesting. 

He ached for the days when she had welcomed his hands on her back or his shoulder pressed to her, being close enough to feel her warmth. Something she apparently was bestowing on Aram Mojtabai.

But she’d kissed him. She wasn’t denying or obfuscating with Donald. Perhaps…

“One, that’s absolutely none of your business. Two, Aram and I are friends. Nothing more than that. I have no interest in sleeping with him. Just like I have no interest in sleeping with you. And yes, I am aware that it was Raymond I was kissing.”

She spits her words at him and then turns to look over her shoulder.

“Ray, get up already.” He shivers again at the nickname. “There is no need to continue kneeling at my feet.”

He smirks up at her. Smothers his confusion. “But Lizzie, kneeling at your feet makes me exactly the right height.”

He kneels up, putting him eye level with her crotch. 

She turns bright red. Ressler turns vaguely green. Red grins and climbs to his feet. 

She faces Ressler. “Look—“

“No, you look, Keen. This is so far outside what’s acceptable that I don’t even…How long has this been going on? How long have you been sleeping with the enemy? Oh god…when I asked if you’d had a lover’s spat, I wasn’t seriously!”

She grins at him, hard, baring most of her teeth. Red has never seen this expression on her face before. He’s not sure he ever wants to see it again.

“It hasn’t effected our working relationship. And it won’t. You can’t even tell when it started, so obviously, it didn’t change anything.”

He pauses, staring at her. Red keeps his face carefully neutral. She’s lying to her partner. She’s standing there, lying to Ressler about them sleeping together. Not only is she not deflecting about this, she is actively trying to inflate it. Red waits, because that is what he does when he does not understand what is happening: More information.

Ressler’s eyes narrow. “Before Garrick at least. My god…you were cheating on Tom before he was brought in for questioning, weren’t you? Was it after the Stewmaker?”

“I knew I found that box just after Zamani. My marriage ended the minute I pulled that box from under the floorboards. No, I never cheated on my husband. The lying bastard that he was.”

Red blinks at that. Those two statements are in no way related, but with them, she is implying that yes, she and Red began sleeping together sometime very soon after Zamani stabbed Tom. That’s my clever Lizzie, he thinks and doesn’t bother to suppress a smirk. Ressler will just think it’s him gloating.

“But obviously, you can’t tell when it started and there has been no effect on the job. So it’s none of your business who I sleep with.”

Ressler’s mouth is pinched. He looks pained. “If that’s all this is, Liz, if you’re just looking for…what? a good time or a quick fuck or something, I—“

“No, Donald. That’s not all this is. Of course, it’s not. Don’t you think if I wanted a ‘quick fuck,’ I’d find someone easier to deal with than Raymond Reddington? This isn’t about convenience, because there is nothing convenient about this. He’s an internationally wanted criminal. Number 4 on the FBI most wanted, no matter that he’s currently an informant, and I’m an FBI profiler…it’s…it’s about as convenient as Hannibal Lector and Clarice Starling.”

Everyone in the room blinks.

“Wow…that’s actually a really apt analogy, now that I think of it. Although, Red is much more attractive and distinctly less psychotic than Dr. Lector.”

Red quirks his lips into that tiny smirk of his. “My thanks, Lizzie. And you are much less vapid and markedly more intelligent than Agent Starling.”

She turns to smile at him and Ressler looks sick.

“Liz, I don’t think you realize what you're doing. Do you know how high his kill count is?”

She looks back at Ressler, eyes narrowed again. “Do you know how high yours is?”

“That’s different!”

“Why?” Her tone is harsh. “Because you’ve got a badge? Res, it’s a piece of metal. You still took human life. So have I. How many have you killed? Seriously. Tell me.”

“102, but that’s—“

“Hey, Red. How many people have you killed?”

“He’s not going to know—“

“Directly and by my own hand? 457.”

She seems to digest this for a moment. Ressler gapes at him.

“Actually, that’s much less than I thought. Funny thing is, I’ve killed 23 people since I started working for the Bureau. Which means that if I killed the same number of people every year for twenty years, I would have killed 460 people. Red has killed fewer people than I would have over the same span of time.”

“Fine.” He says, throwing up his hands and turning on his heel to leave. “Do what you want. Don’t come running to me when it gets you killed.”

He slams the door behind him and Liz blinks. “If I were dead, how could I go to him at all?”

Red laughs, but sobers quickly. He stands and examines Lizzie for a moment.

“Why did you lie to him about us?”

She blinks and swallows.

“I’m sorry. Did you want to…hide this? You said you…but you never said you actually wanted to sleep with me. I’m sorry, that was…I shouldn’t have assumed…”

She seems suddenly skittish and inarticulate.

Red shakes his head.

“Of course, I want to sleep with you. Don’t be an idiot…Lizzie, I would have agreed with whatever you wanted to tell Donald. If you wanted to claim that I forced you into that kiss, I would have gone along with you.”

She frowns at him. 

“Why would I? That’s absurd. Even Res knows that you would never do something like that. To anyone.”

Red shrugs. “I’m the villain, Lizzie. I’m the baddie. People enjoy blaming me for things.”

She shook her head. “Why would I want to lie like that anyway? I mean…we probably shouldn’t tell Cooper, but otherwise? Tell whoever you want…”

She trails off, staring up at him. She seems to be coming to a decision, so he remains silent. Meeting her gaze unflinchingly.

“Red…Raymond, I have something for you. Are…should I wait until we’re in the air?”

He blinks, trying to dismiss the automatic innuendo, and nods. Whatever it is, this is not a secure room.

“Come. The jet is waiting.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's a bit of a wrinkle in their plans.

Lizzie waits until they take off before she even looks at Red. He’s smiling blandly at her and she can feel the phantom heat of him against her palms again. Whatever progress they made, whatever step forward they’d taken, she’s watching slowly as it slipped away.

“We need to discuss Detective Wilcox.”

Dembe is watching them, glancing back and forth between them. He shakes his head and stands. “Raymond, I am going to speak with the Captain.”

Red looks up at him, frowning, but nods. When Dembe disappears, Liz slides forward to kneel in front of Red for once. She stares up at him, as his eyes widen slightly. 

“Red…Raymond, I know I…didn’t respond the way you wanted me to when you told me you loved me. The way I should have responded…I just…”

“Lizzie, it’s—“

Her hands fly to his thighs, gripping tightly. “Don’t you dare say it’s fine!”

He scoots forward in his chair and reaches for her hands. He’ll take whatever she’s willing to give.

“I don’t expect you to love me, Lizzie. I don’t deserve that. You called me a monster, twice, since we met. You were correct. I am…comfortable which what I am, but that does not make me less a monster.”

“Red, you aren’t!” She’s having trouble calling him by his given name and something inside his chest deflates just a little bit more. “I…I was wrong. I was so very wrong about you. Please…you’re not a monster and you never were. Or else, all of us’re monsters. I…just because I don’t say something…doesn’t mean that I don’t feel it. Do you understand?”

He examines her for a long minute, before a tentative smile touches his lips.

“Lizzie, are you telling me that you love me?”

She swallows against the hard, painful knot in her throat and nods once. His smile is radiant. He pulls her up into his lap and she goes willingly. Her arms around his neck and her knees at his hips. He spreads his legs a little to giver her a more stable seat and she buries her head in his shoulder.

She inhales, because he always smell delicious. She makes a mental note to ask him about his cologne or aftershave or whatever it is. 

One of his his hands is running soothing circles across her back. The other is wrapped tightly around her waist, as though she might vanish if he lets her go. She can feel his mouth at her ear.

He exhales softly. “Lizzie, I adore you, completely, and I always will.”

He pulls back to look her in the eye. “May I ask you a personal question?”

She laughs and settles more securely onto his thighs. “Red, you can ask me anything.”

“Not terribly long ago, you asked me if I was your father, Lizzie, so…how did this,” he waves a hand vaguely between them, though he doesn’t release her waist. “come about?”

She flushes darkly and averts her gaze. “I…I didn’t really think you were. I’m older than Jennifer would be, but I had to know for certain. And you’re always telling me that you never lie to me. I had to hear you say no.”

“Why?”

His question is blunt and his tone empty. She glances back up at him, humiliation still burning in her cheeks. “Because…if you’d said yes, I…I was going to need years of therapy and I was going to hate myself for a very long time. I don’t even want to contemplate it.”

He raises an eyebrow.

“When you paused…God, I thought I was going to be sick all over the floor. Why did you pause?”

He snorts. “I didn’t appreciate the question nor the implications of your asking it.”

She shook her head. “It was one part me needing you to say no and one part me not understanding why else someone I hardly knew would trade his life for mine. Although I think I should have probably have remembered that you’re first cover for me was your girlfriend from Ann Arbor…”

He tilts his head briefly. “Now that we’ve established that this isn’t incest…”

She snorts and covers his mouth with her palm. “Nope. No shop talk yet. I have something for you.”

She twists to dig her badge out of her pocket. She can feel both Red’s curious gaze on her as she flips it open and slips her badge out of the holder. Behind the badge, into the leather, she’d dug a small hole into which she’d shoved the fulcrum.

Now, she thumbs it out and holds it in her palm.

“Raymond.”

She looks up at him, but he’s staring at the small object in her palm. She offers it to him.

“Lizzie, where did you get that?”

She smiles. “My bunny.”

He blinks rapidly and glances up at her. “Excuse me?”

“The stuffed rabbit I had when I was little. It was inside it. I never noticed before. Here.” She holds it out to him. He stares at her. “I want you to have it. If it will keep you safe, than I want you to have it. If it will keep you safe, I need you to have it.”

“Lizzie, I…My god.” 

“This is the reason I’ve been spending so much time with Aram. I asked him to try to access whatever is one this. He couldn’t. He didn’t know how. Do you? Please, tell me you do, Red?”

He nods. “Yes, I’ve worked with these before. I have the tech somewhere or other. Lizzie, do you have any idea what you’ve given me?”

She smiles at him crookedly. “I think I do. I think that has…what? Information? of some sort, against some very high ranking people. I don’t know who, but I think Alan Fitch was one of them. And I think they want to kill you, but you having that means they can’t. I think they’re the ones who sent Anslow Garrick after you. I think they’re the ones who sent Luther Braxton after me. They’re testing you. Trying to get this back.”

He stares at her for a moment, before bursting into laughter.

“That’s my Lizzie. Sharp as a box of razor blades.”

He’s smiling up at her and she can’t help herself. She slips a hand around to grip the back of his neck and drops her mouth to his. 

Their first kiss was desperate, all consuming, just this side of painful. This kiss? The exact opposite. They know, now, that they have time, will have time. So they map each other out, tasting, hands wandering lazily. 

She spares a thought for their position. She’s above him again. She wonders if perhaps her subconscious wants to make up for the power imbalance.

Red pulls back, still smiling, and says, “I always seem to find myself looking up at you, Lizzie. You’re not an exceptionally tall woman and I am not an exceptionally short man, so I wonder why this would be?”

She grins at this. “I was actually just thinking about that. I think it’s the power imbalance. You’ve got a good three or four inches on me and you’re…There is an obvious power imbalance here. I’m thinking my subconscious wants to fix that by placing you in a position of submission to me.”

He blinks, clearly startled that she offered a serious answer, and laughs. “If there is, indeed, a power imbalance, Sweetheart, it’s in your favor. I will literally do anything for you. Say the word, Lizzie. Anything you want.”

She laughs softly, but it’s bitter. “What I usually want is the truth. Answers to my questions.” He opens his mouth, but she lays a finger cross his lips. “What I want right now, though?”

She leans down and let’s her breath ghost across his ear. “What I want right now is to feel you inside me, filling me up, touching me everywhere.” She could hear him swallow and feel the results of her words hardening against her. “I want to taste you. I want to come on your tongue and your fingers and your cock. Will you let me, Raymond? Red? Will you do that for me?”

She’d barely ever heard him curse before, but, “Holy Christ. Lizzie, what you do to me.”

She pulls back, grinning. “It’s only fair.”

“In what way?” He’s breathing a little heavily and glaring up at her halfheartedly.

“Well, your voice gets me wet every time you open your goddamn mouth, which I’d like to point out is extremely inconvenient? So, yes. I think it’s only fair.”

“What?” He’s genuinely confused. She can see it in his eyes.

“Red, are you joking? No one has ever told you how deliciously sexy your voice is?”

He blinks sluggishly, shakes his head, and pauses. A wicked smile breaks over his face. “No, Elizabeth. No one has ever told me that. You’re my first. What should I do with this new found knowledge, then?”

“Whatever you do with it, Raymond, will have to wait. We’re being re-routed.”

Red’s attention, so focused on Liz and so intense, snaps immediately to where Dembe has just entered the cabin.

“Excuse me?”  
Dembe nods. “We were scheduled to refuel in Morocco, but Morocco is not accepting out communications and a call came in from Algiers, demanding that we land. Forbidding us from flying over their airspace.”

Red’s expression blanks for a moment and Lizzie climbs off him. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a phone. Lizzie listens to him speak flawless Arabic to whoever picks up his call.

After a moment, he switches to English. “What exactly made you believe this would be acceptable to me, Ahmed? …No, I realize that you aren’t Prime Minister anymore, but that is not my fault. I put you in office. I was not paid to keep you there…I told you…No, this is completely unacceptable. Someone is orchestrating this. I want to know who…Now, Ahmed. Or I actually will land in your country. You will certainly not appreciate the outcome of that eventuality…I don’t believe you, Ahmed…Fine, you can’t tell me? You don’t know? Well, then. I’m sure I don’t know how those pictures of you with that twelve year old boy-whore were leaked to the international news channels. Oh they haven’t been? Well…not yet anyway. Have a lovely afternoon, Ahmed, because I can guarantee you won’t have many more of them.”

Red hangs up, his nostrils flaring. He looks up at Dembe for a moment. “It’s the Organization. It’s that little weasel who sent Braxton.”

Dembe nods. “What do we do?”

Red turns to look at Lizzie, obviously weighing his options. Excitement and fear bubble up in her gut. She’s going to make an absurd suggestion. She’s going to throw her entire life out the window. If they don’t get back to speak with Detective Wilcox, there is a distinct chance, she’s throwing her freedom out the window too. But…She’s going to do it anyway.

Her mind wanders for a moment, to thoughts of lounging with Red in the hot African sun, naked skin soaking up the sun and turning honey-brown. She wonders how Red would look lying completely nude on a sandy beach (not that her suggestion involved beaches…). She wonders if he would be comfortable enough in his skin to do that. Comfortable enough with her. She wants it so badly she can almost taste the salty-sweat of his skin in the heat. 

“Red…May I…make a suggestion?”

Red nods, curiosity seeping into his eyes.

“I…Well, I know a person or two in Kiffa. Do you have enough fuel to get there? There’s an airport there.”

Red raises an eyebrow. She’s never been to Africa, so what is this? “And why would we need to land in Kiffa? What are you proposing, Lizzie?”

She smiles at him and glances briefly at Dembe. “I’m proposing that we drop off the grid for a bit. This…mysterious Organization seems to know a distressing amount of information about you. You never had the chip put back into your shoulder, so it shouldn’t be a problem. We can…see my friends. They can help. Best part? They have no connection to you. They have no connections to me, so no one will have any idea where you’ve gone. You can try to access what’s on that thing and we can regroup for a little while.”

She’s out of her mind, Red thinks, willing to throw her entire life away on what? Him? “We? Lizzie, you are…What you’re suggesting is…career suicide. You know that, yes? The moment you return, they will be nothing but suspicious of you. And when the blacklist is done…there is a good chance that your career will be as well.”

Lizzie shrugged. “Raymond, my career has already been destroyed. I’m a profiler who didn’t realize she was married to a spy. My father is a career criminal, which the FBI only knows because of you, by the way. You singled me out from day one and the minute you asked for me, suspicion was thrown on me. The Bureau knows that I’m violent, unpredictable, morally ambiguous, and not entirely loyal to them. When the blacklist is over? I don’t have a career. I fully expect them to arrest me for treason or something equally unpleasant, by that point.”

She wants him to say yes. She wants to just drop out of her life, even if it’s only for a little while. She wants to…

Her heart stops. She wants to know what it would be like to travel as his wife. As Mrs. Raymond Reddington. As Elizabeth Reddington. She can’t swallow. Her throat is closing up. She wonders if Red can see the panic that’s clawing at her chest. 

When did this start? How had she not noticed that she was in this deep?

Red is staring at her, his mouth slightly open and his brow furrowed. There is a brief pause. “Well, that just won’t do.”

As quickly as the panic had risen, it disappears. She wants Red forever. She’s already basically admitted that she’s in love with him and her life is a gaping hole without him. Everything else? Meaningless. She realizes how unhealthy and dependent that makes her sound, but she can’t seem to make herself care about that part. 

She wants Red for always. She wants his world, his life. Not just the glamor and glitz, the riches and fancy food and designer clothing. She wants all of it: the illegal arms deals, the heists, the rush of a job well done, the smuggling, and whatever other pies he has his fingers in. She wants to love him and to protect him and move through his world with him. She wants the dirts and grime of it. The blood and pain and wonder of it.

She’s gotten distracted by her own realization, which sits heavy in her gut, but is not less true for that. 

She forces a laugh. “Raymond, there is nothing you can do about it. What’s done is done. I’d much rather you were in my life. A meteoric career with the FBI is not a better alternative. You said you’d make me famous. You have and before this is done, it will probably get worse. We’re the next Hannibal and Clarice, Red, but they lived happily ever after.”

He looks pained for a moment and he opens his mouth. She holds up a finger. “No. Don’t tell me otherwise. I refused to see the second movie because I didn’t want it spoiled. In my head, they live happily ever after.”

Red blinks. “You…wanted them to be together?”

She grins. “Of course I did. Hannibal was…god, he was delicious. I wanted him to have what…and who…he wanted. As long as he stopped eating people. Because that was a little disturbing.”

Red huffs out a laugh and shakes his head. “Lizzie, you never cease to amaze me.” He turns. “Dembe, make arrangements to land in Kiffa. See if you can make it look like it’s just a gas run. After we land, make sure the plane flies directly home.”

Dembe nods and ducks back into the cockpit to inform the pilot. 

“So,” Red looks back at Lizzie, who’s retaken her earlier seat. “These friends of yours…I didn’t realize you’d ever been to Africa in general, never mind Mauritania. How do you happen to have friends in Kiffa?”

She grins at him.

She’s won.


End file.
